


Lonely at the top, Lee/Kara, PG.

by elzed



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-09
Updated: 2007-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25288030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elzed/pseuds/elzed
Summary: A repost from LJ/DW. First posted in December 2007 just after Razor came out.
Relationships: Kara/Lee
Kudos: 6





	Lonely at the top, Lee/Kara, PG.

**Author's Note:**

> A repost from LJ/DW. First posted in December 2007 just after Razor came out.

**Spoilers:** Season One, first half of Season Two; and Razor – this is a post-Razor fic, set… well, set at the end of the film, replacing the existing Kara/Lee exchange.  
**Wordcount:** 2,100 or so.  
**Disclaimer:** The characters, alas, do not belong to me, nor does the show. Otherwise I can tell you that motherfrakking hiatus would be over already (and I speak as someone who joined the good ship _Galactica_ about a half-hour ago. Okay, six weeks tops?)

Betaed for fannish consistency by [](http://bop-radar.livejournal.com/profile)[**bop_radar**](http://bop-radar.livejournal.com/) and [](http://helen-c.livejournal.com/profile)[**helen_c**](http://helen-c.livejournal.com/) ; and prose kicked into shape by [](http://overnighter.livejournal.com/profile)[**overnighter**](http://overnighter.livejournal.com/).

**_Lonely at the top._ **

One half of Lee wants this, his own command – the freedom to make his choices unimpeded; the swelling pride at his promotion, swiftly abated, because he knows _why_ he’s made commander of a battleship at an age when most pilots are hoping for a captain’s commission.

The other half – the half that knows better – fears it.

He stares at the amber liquid in his glass, swirls it around. The oppressive darkness of the room around him does nothing to lighten his mood. Every corner of Admiral Cain’s quarters – as forbidding as his father’s are welcoming – evokes her presence. If he believed in spirits, he’d think she was haunting him.

How else can he explain why he tried to kill Kara not once, but twice?

**********

_“Command is about people.”  
“Remember that.” _  


Lee hears Kara before he sees her, recognizes her step in the corridor before she draws level with the open hatch, her familiar brisk knock.

He’s been expecting her to come to him since the debrief. Dreading it, craving it. Everything else seems black and white now; in the command post, there are fewer shades of gray. Kara, though, is another matter.

She strides in, her dirty fatigues swapped for wrinkled blues, her hair scraped back in a ponytail. She still looks haggard, but she’s holding together, making him wonder whether he looks half as composed.

Like Kendra Shaw before her, she shakes her head when he gestures towards a chair, but Lee doubts it has anything to do with respect for the memory of Helena Cain. There’s a restlessness here that is pure Starbuck – nerves, attitude, and a diffuse hostility that he can’t hold against her.

She cuts right to the chase.

“You might as well hear this from me – I’ve asked to be reassigned to _Galactica_.”

Rejection and relief flood through him all at once. Thank the gods she’s no longer his to send to her death. Curse them for taking her away from him.

“Any reason?” As if he didn’t know.

“You might say that I have a beef with my commanding officer.”

There’s more than a hint of irritation under the lighthearted tone. He notices the knife in her hands for the first time, how she opens and shuts it almost unconsciously, and wonders how sharp the blade is. Whether in fact he wants Kara with a knife in his quarters, just as she’s about to tear him a new one.

“And what’s that?”

“The motherfrakker keeps trying to get me killed.”

“You ever think you might deserve it?”

He knows that line is doomed the moment he utters it. It’s possibly the most pathetic attempt at lightening an impossible situation, but banter has always been their favorite mode of interaction.

She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

_Frak._

“Why, Lee?”

She pauses, lets the question hang for a few heartbeats.

“I can just about get why you wanted to shoot the frakking ship down when we lost contact, although I am so godsdamn happy your father chose to come on this mission I can’t tell you.”

“So am I,” he murmurs.

“Good. I’m really _glad_. Now could you just run me through one more time why the frak you asked _me_ to stay behind and commit glorious suicide?”

There’s barely suppressed rage in her voice, but her eyes are pleading and hurt and it’s exactly why he hates being where he is. _Exactly_. Because Kara is his Achilles’ heel.

“You know I had no choice.”

She’s a soldier, she knows the rules; obeyed them without question. Somehow that makes this even harder.

Kara is pacing the room now, deliberately not looking at him. She stops in front of one of the plain and infuriatingly dim light fixtures and examines it close up, her back turned. Her voice is so low Lee barely catches what she’s whispering.

“I need to hear it.” _Please._

He stops playing with his glass and takes a long swallow, relishing the burn, the smoky aftertaste, the slight buzz that just dulls the edge. Pulls himself together. He can do this.

“It was a vital mission and you were the only officer left standing. I knew I could trust you to go through with it all the way.”

And if he hadn’t asked her, it would have been a betrayal of his mission, his duty, and his command. To tell the truth, he felt like he’d already killed her when he ordered the nuclear strike on the basestar, overruled or not. _That_ was his moment of clarity, the point where he truly understood the meaning of command. Not from a theoretical perspective, but from a physical and emotional one. His heart and soul had torn at the thought of losing her, his gut had threatened to revolt.

That’s when he knew that the mission – the safety of his ship and of the last ragtag remnants of the human race – was in the balance, and his love for her had been irrelevant in that equation. Ordering her to stay and detonate the bomb had been the only logical conclusion.

Somehow, however, sitting in that dim office and watching her wait for him to speak, her back ramrod stiff, he can’t quite say all that.

“I couldn’t blow her up ship to ship – the raiders were in the way. And I couldn’t order anyone else to stay. I had no choice, Kara.”

He takes another swallow, feels the warmth spread out from his knotted stomach. She hasn’t moved, still won’t look at him.

“It damn near killed me.”

She snorts.

“Damn near killed me, too, Lee, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Lee closes his eyes. The ship’s engines are thrumming deep into its belly, the vibrations barely perceptible. He’s not yet used to their feel, subtly different from _Galactica’_ s.

The day’s events keep whirling through his brain in endless reruns that he’s powerless to stop.

Four hours ago he ordered a nuclear missile strike on the ship she had boarded. Three hours and forty-five minutes ago, give or take, he told her to blow herself up, to complete her mission. _His_ mission. Three hours and thirty minutes ago, he heard her voice on the comm, requesting permission to land, just before the basestar exploded in a glorious, short-lived burst of light.

From tortured guilt to blessed relief; from desolation to elation; all in thirty minutes. Thirty frakking minutes between death and life.

Lee shakes his head.

“I don’t ever want to be in a position to order you to your death again. In combat, side by side, it’s different, but this?”

He opens his eyes.

Kara hasn’t moved from her place by the wall, but she’s turned to face him. Her eyes are trained on his, hazel with a glint of steel. She’s still holding the knife, but it’s closed now in her grip.

Her mouth twitches, quirks up on one side.

“Now you know how the old man feels.”

“Maybe I do.”

He shrugs.

“I’m glad you’re his responsibility again and not mine. I’ll miss you; I’ll miss having you as my CAG – though I bet ship discipline will improve – but I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I won’t ever have to stand in CIC again and order you to martyr yourself for the mission. At least I frakking well hope so.”

This time her smile is still tentative, but more genuine, even if it doesn’t wipe out the wariness in her gaze.

“Apology accepted, sir.”

“I’m sorry, Starbuck,” he says immediately, and the wariness fades a little.

She sighs, and he watches her breast rise and fall, mesmerized; each breath a blatant proof of life, of survival against the odds.

“You _will_ miss me. Shooter’s style is… it’s different. But he’ll be fine.”

“ _Shooter_? That’s the name of my new CAG?” Who the frak is Shooter? Lee’s been spending hours learning everybody’s name and the pilots’ frakking callsigns, but he swears new ones are coming out of the woodwork every day.

“Lieutenant David Amory? Ring any bells?”

His mind’s eye presents him with a face, long scar down one cheek, tall, dark-haired thirtysomething pilot. Good combat stats. Reserved. Very quiet.

“Sure. Any command experience?”

“Yes. He used to be a captain before Stinger busted him down for insubordination.”

Lee smiles. “Not so different then.”

“It was after the _Scylla_.”

Different, then.

The _Pegasus_ logbook recorded several cases of dissent in the days following the massacre – a few officers were demoted, some landed short spells in the brig. No mutinies that he can remember, though. Lee racks his brains, pieces together names, dates.

“Amory… Went down with a couple of other pilots? Bertel and… Kronen, is it?”

“Kroner. Nice one, Lee. They made it clear they didn’t approve, and Taylor was a Cain loyalist. You’ll score bonus points with the pilots if you reinstate their rank – they’re still popular on the flight deck.”

“Hang on – I thought _I_ was popular on the flight deck. Now I need to score bonus points with the other flyboys?”

“Hello? New COs _always_ need bonus points. Especially with the pilots – you know what a bunch of undisciplined reprobates we are”.

“On _Galactica_ , yes – I was under the impression that things were more orderly here on _Pegasus_.”

“That was before you appointed me CAG,” Kara says, and she breaks out in a grin that makes him feel a hundred times better.

Maybe they can survive this, put it behind them, keep their friendship. Maybe he hasn’t frakked this up beyond all recognition.

“Amory will make a good CAG, sir,” she adds, and he nods.

“Shooter. Got it.”

She’s moved closer now, and Lee stands up.

“Is the old man taking you back as his CAG?”

He’ll be surprised if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, but he wonders how far she’s gone with this in the past couple of hours.

“Probably. I haven’t heard. He’ll talk to you first, I guess – make sure you’re releasing me.” She looks up at him with a faint smirk. “You’re not going to screw with me are you?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

For all the teasing, there’s a solemn feel to the air that he can’t entirely attribute to the dark formality of his new quarters. Their imminent separation hangs heavy in the air.

Abruptly, Lee steps forward and wraps his arms around her shoulders to pull her into an embrace. Her hands land on his back – the right one fisted, still clenching the knife she’s been playing with, the left splayed across the center of his back, holding him close. The heat of her palm radiates through his uniform.

It should be a brief hug, friends saying goodbye, comrades wishing each other well, but they’re so much more that that, and they linger. His cheek is against her hair as he inhales the smell of shampoo and Kara; her nose is buried in his neck, perilously intimate.

They’re clinging on to each other with the kind of desperate intensity that belies the sensible conversation they’ve just had – the muted apologies, the pilot banter. It speaks of fear and guilt and anger and relief, and the knowledge that – painful though it is – this parting is better than the alternative, better than going through this hell again.

“I’ll miss you,” she murmurs into his neck.

“I’ll miss you too,” he chokes out.

When they finally let go of each other – Lee having reined in any impulse to let his mouth stray and kiss her, to let his hands slip lower down her back – Kara hands him the knife.

“I think it used to belong to Cain. Maybe you should have it.”

It’s a plain pocketknife, well-made. The steel of the clasp is inlaid seamlessly into the wooden handle, and it opens and shuts with a satisfying click. The short blade looks worn, but razor sharp. There’s a faint scrawl of letters on the steel, which could read H. Cain, or maybe something entirely different.

Lee’s seen it before – in his XO’s hands. He looks up at Kara questioningly. She shrugs, palms wide.

“Major Shaw tossed it to me just before she forced me off the basestar at gunpoint. Like some sort of memento.”

She pauses.

“Not a lot to show for a life, huh?”

Lee shakes his head.

“I guess not. You have any idea why she did it?”

He has, plenty, and most of them start with her role in the boarding party that took the _Scylla_. Evidently Kara thinks the same.

“Maybe she thought she had a lot to answer for. Maybe she had it coming.”

Lee thinks, briefly, of the _Olympic Carrier_ ; of the scattered ships they left to the mercy of the attacking Cylons when they left for Ragnar Anchorage; of the people he’s led into combat, those he’s lost; of how he almost killed Kara twice today.

“We’ve all got it coming,” he says, and hands Kara back the knife.


End file.
